What did you want to say Janelle?

I sometimes try to restate things that Zach and Janelle say to me. For the most part I can accurately explain to people what they (Zach and Janelle) tell me. Sometimes I screw it up. I think that at times I've not done so well to explain and people get the idea that I'm doing something that Zach and Janelle want me to do and not something that I want to do. 


99% of the people around me, my family and friends, the people that email me, people I see at the gym, and the people that read my blog are very supportive of everything that I do, but there is that tiny 1% that want to tear me down and  be negative. 


I asked Janelle to just explain her point of view in her own "guest blog". She has seriously been working on it for over a week. So the following was written by Janelle. I also think that Zach will probably write a blog or two as well. He seemed pretty pumped that Janelle was writing one. 


For those of you that don't know, Janelle is the girl I workout with. She is a personal trainer, but she's not my personal trainer. Zach is her husband. He does make my meal plans and workouts....obviously, he's a personal trainer too.  
The following is from Janelle:

There are so many things I want to say, and this “guest blog” has been edited and re-written many times.  Bottom line, I might have to guest blog a few more times before I say everything I’ve wanted to say.  Sarah is awesome… all my gym friends are.  We give each other a hard time sometimes but we all really do want each other to meet our goals and succeed.  I joke around with these girls that they actually probably know me better than any of my other girl friends just because we see each other constantly and for some reason the gym just feels like a safe place to tell each other everything.  Some girls have “frienemies”  (friends that are really your enemies who want to see you fail) and we are definitely not that.  On the surface, some people think we are mean to each other or trying to make each other feel bad or forcing each other to do things.  The truth is, we all just want the best for each other.  I’ll include my husband Zach in this too.  

We all need a push every once in a while and I think Zach is at the top of this pyramid, and underneath are me, Sarah and Ashley.  There are other girls that are in and out who are just as supportive but their schedules just don’t always match up.  Zach is really blunt and to the point about our workouts and meal plans and it’s starting to rub off on us, but I think it is making all three of us better at what we are trying to do.  There are times Sarah will say, “yeah you can definitely do more weight than that” to me.  There are times I will tell Sarah, “if you screw up your meal plan every time there is a cookout, birthday party, or wedding you will never lose weight.  If you want to maintain let me know and we can work on that” and Ashley gets the occasional, “WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU DOING?!?” when she sneaks in a tiny 5- pound dumbbell when she should be using at least a 25.  Bottom line, we aren’t mean to each other we are helping each other get what we go to the gym for… results.  I always tell myself “you came here, so you might as well get something out of it” and I think that’s the attitude we are all starting to have and we keep each other accountable.

So that’s the first thing I wanted to throw out there.  Second… Sarah and I really are not on “diets”.  If you think about it, we all have a diet. It’s what we eat on a regular basis; however, when people say they are going on a diet, it means they are eating exactly what someone or a book told them to eat for a certain amount of time.  No one tells Sarah or I what to eat… We look at our goals which are based on a bod pod and what we are trying to do.  Sarah wants to be at a healthy weight, I want to have a certain look for the competitions I do.  We look at time frame, and we figure out calories or  grams of carbs/protein/fat that are needed.  What we eat is purely up to us, it depends how creative you are.  I am not that creative so I eat a lot of tuna :)  So I guess you could say I’m on a tuna diet but I totally do that because I’m lazy and cooking and washing dishes wears me out.  

Sarah gets a lot of comments like, “Just try it, will one day really be that big of a deal?  One more beer won’t hurt”  Truth is, it DOES hurt, it IS a big deal, and when people do that they are messing her up.  Think of how many “special events” there are to celebrate.  We celebrate everything!  If she does this once a month, it could take her an additional two weeks to  get back on track and then she will be losing weight terribly slowly and get discouraged and stressed which will usually lead to more poor choices. Once Sarah is happy with her results and is at a healthy happy composition (it’s really about composition more than weight) she will just maintain. At that point, there are a lot of options.  She will have a good grasp on what things have more or less calories and her body will be used to eating every three hours.  She can work out and then go to a wedding on the weekend and do some extra cardio the next week.  Right now though, her goals are different so her plan is different.  Plan… her plan for her life, not her diet.  Just like in life there are different stages, and this is the stage she is at right now.  The principles that she is teaching herself she will have to remember in order to maintain her weight once she gets to her goal.  That’s the difference between Sarah’s lifestyle change and a diet.  Not to mention that Sarah will always have to stay active, as we all should… not just work out and eat certain things for a certain event and then go back to doing whatever whenever.  That’s why it’s not a diet.